This is a really odd and uneasy film about an obnoxious man with obsessive/compulsive disorder and his acquisition of friends. Jack Nicholson, in the starring role as author Melvin Udall, plays himself and adopts the character's clinical traits. What's unusual is that Melvin is so rude and so persnickety that it irks us to be around him. Eventually, he softens around the edges, but we still wonder how anyone can stand to spend 5 minutes with him. And by film's end, when he has grown some, we still wonder if he is capable of the relationship he seems to achieve. It may be that this is supposed to make us feel warm and fuzzy. Instead, we feel unsure and cautious.

Melvin buddies up with waitress Helen Hunt and gay artist Greg Kinnear here. Hunt, likeable as she is, bothers us with her accent that appears and disappears. We never believe her as more than Helen Hunt the actress playing a role. Her confusion is squelched by her mother, Shirley Knight, or her cute son, played by newcomer Jesse James. Kinnear, meanwhile, plays a stereotype that gets stereotypically gay bashed by Skeet Ulrich, playing a stereotypical gay hustler, and his stereotypical friends. It's a tiresome retread of a archetype character that we thought had all but disappeared not only from the planet but from films.

See, "As Good As It Gets" wants to be brash. It wants to make you feel it has "no holds barred." It almost succeeds in pulling the wool over our eyes. But in the end, everything rings so Hollywood, that we just can't accept the film as anything but a film. It's a pretentious and standard romantic drama with a few new wrinkles thrown in to disguise the blatant mistreatment of women (sex objects), gays (pansies, victims), blacks (thugs), street boys (hoodlums), Hispanics (fat weepy maids) and mothers (fat jolly women).

Still, the film works so hard to be "likable," that one can't help but like it a little. We want to see these characters become friends. We want to see Nicholson get the girl. Why? I couldn't tell you. Maybe were so use to the cliches that we react in the predetermined way. But the film somehow actually makes us like the characters. And Nicholson is allowed to make the character more nice when he gets on "medication" to cure his disorder. Apparently, the same pill that qualms Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder also quashes bigotry. I know a few people who could use that pill!

Edited poorly with a few continuity errors and the look of a film that has been chopped on a few too many times, "As Good As It Gets" somehow won several Golden Globes. It's not worthy of such honor. This is a movie programed for middle class sensibilities and blue collar reactionaries. Maybe they need it. Those of us with a brain only end up cursing ourselves for letting the film affect us.

Note:

At one time the film was to be called "Old Friends."

Directed by James L. Brooks who also served as co- scripter (revamping Mark Andrus' work) and co-producer.

Also with Cuba Gooding Jr., Yeardley Smith, Lupe Ontiveros, Lawrence Kasdan (cameo as Dr. Green), Jamie Kennedy (as a street hustler), Harold Ramis (cameo as Dr. Betts), and Todd Solondz (cameo as man on bus).

Nepotism factor: Chloe Brooks and Cooper Brooks appear as children at 24 cafe.

Music by Hans Zimmer.

The film is dedicated "For Diane Brooks, Ted Bessell and Boo."

Songs by Art Garfunkel (who does an Eric Idle song over the end credits), Danielle Brisboise, Jane Siberry, and others.

Kinnear's art is actually by Billy Sullivan.

Review written in 1998

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